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Building a mailing list is one of the most important things a self-published author can do to turn her successes into a real career. Discovery is the biggest challenge for any writer, but once you’ve been discovered, it’s critical to keep that new fan engaged.

One of the most common questions we’re asked by writers considering our service is, “What will you do to help me promote my book?” That expectation surprised us at first; we’re not a publisher, we’re a distributor, and traditionally the only promotion a publisher would expect from a distributor is availability.

Hopefully after last week’s post, you have a better grasp on the concept of intentional branding. You now see how, with planning and purpose, a brand can work from basic concepts like a deceptively simple logo and work outward until it permeates every aspect of your brand. And you can also see that branding intentionally can make you recognizable from head to toe, near or far, even if you’re standing in a crowd of similar colleagues. That’s some pretty unbreakable branding. Almost like a Brand of Steel you might say.

I’ve written before on the importance of a brand in the marketing scheme of a self-published author. That post is still a good primer for the bare basic concepts of branding. It’s full of good advice that boils down to “make conscious choices about your brand and then implement them in ways that are true to the brand.” Or, to put it shorter, make your branding intentional. Brand with intent.

Recently, I visited an author’s conference that had a plethora of workshops and panels as part of its lineup. Always curious what others are saying about my area of expertise, I visited two different panels on the topic of branding yourself as a self-published author.